flyinRyan

I'm replying with someone who was challenging the general assertion that the spying might actually be good.

>Because it isn't internally consistent.

Example?

>Neither the absence of finite resources nor the absence of capitalism are consistent features of the economy in Star Trek.

It is in the earth economy. Other cultures still have money, but humans do not.

>This is rather emphatically not a consistent feature of the economy of Star Trek.

Well, obviously you can't just go be a star ship captain because so many want to do this. But you certainly don't have to flip burgers at McDonald's. You can pursue any dream and it will only be your talents that decide, not your financial situation.

That's what you got from what I said? I'm saying that people think because communication is digital, and digital is easy to listen in on that we should be listening in on it. I say fuck that. Today it would be easy to listen in on anyone anywhere with a little hardware. Easy is not a justification for doing something.

The Snowden drama is all that's keeping this relevant. The public tends to be like a sleeping person. If you tell them the house is on fire, the first they will do is try to get rid of you because you are a nuance. If you persist they will give up on trying to be rid of you and try to find out why you won't stop and attack that instead, unless it appears harder to be rid of than you are.

wtf are you talking about? The revolutions have increased work times, not reduced them. It's basically unions that have reduced work time.

Why is it inconsistent? It's consistent with techno-anarchy: scarcity is a solved problem. Without finite resources there is no longer any point to capitalism, a system which allocates finite resources.

So people are left to live life how ever they see fit. No more commercials, since that's pointless. Without commercials, there's no TV shows just designed to get viewers since you no longer need them. If you manage to make something new you may as well share it with everyone (via a replicator) because... what else could you do? "Karma" is all that's left to chase.

> Seriously, how do people in Star Trek universe survive in their economy?

That's pretty simple: they have replicators. Food shortage? Gone. There never was a real land shortage, we create that with capitalism. Get rid of money and there is no longer any reason to rent out property. Rent it out for what? If everyone has a place to stay and you can replicate anything else, what would you use money for?

Or better yet, strengthen unions again so we can do something about the fact that the discrepancy between median worker pay and executive pay is probably larger than it was in fucking feudal times.

It's always an employer's economy. We call it an "employees economy" when they exploit us a bit less than they have previously. But even now, what some are calling the best time in history to be a software dev, there was a startup right here on HN complaining about how hard it was to find the perfect employee and how they've been looking for over a year. Could you go without income for a year? I sure as hell couldn't.

Do you have any experience with the real world at all? If you need a job and have to get one, you'll take what you can get. You think the people who work at Walmart and get welfare think Walmart pays plenty? They have no options.

There is a massive power imbalance between companies and employees because they need us to expand and we need them to eat. If it weren't for unions we'd still be shuffling into the mines from the time we wake until the time we have to sleep again, six days a week. Do you think miners thought they were getting paid enough?

If people can't be bothered to care about security, they won't be interested in doing this.

Just wait until you hear what their deductible is.

Can we stfu about Godwin? Do you even know what it means? It's from the time of usenet and all it was was an observation that when the Nazi's come up the discussion is usually over.

It's certainly not a good excuse to go ignoring important lessons in history. Nazi Germany is one of the better examples of why "just doing my job" is not a valid excuse for anything.

I disagree. It's dangerous to let people slide because "they're just doing their job". People "just doing their job" are the enablers. Without them, none of the really serious man-made tragedies of history would have been possible.

I meant that having the opinion that Snowden is the bad guy here is dangerous. We really need more light on this scandal, not less.

Well, I'm sure the employer will try to tell you they do but part of being a consultant is selling. :) I don't pay $800 for an iphone because it costs $700 to make (probably more like $50-$200), I pay it because that's the price the market decided it was worth.

But $800/day is still significantly more than $100k/yr even after taking those things into account. For me both those numbers were higher but it came to a 45% increase if I only took 6 weeks vacation.

Head hunter. It's really, really easy. Remember, they don't make money unless you're making money. Just be careful that they don't screw you on the rate (you should always try to find out from the company what they're paying for you so you can see what the agency is actually taking because they will lie about it).

I would expect consulting rates to be around $300/hr. IBM charges more than that (over $500/hr).

No, why would they? Does an iphone cost less in the Congo (assuming you would buy it legally)?

>"OMG $200 an hour — that's like $400k a year full-time! That's insane!"

But it's not full time and that's precisely why it costs roughly 3x contract rates. A portion of your year is "down time" searching for projects and no one is paying for that. So you put that into your project costs.

If the companies you're pitching don't realize this you're probably pitching to the wrong companies because it's pretty well known.

EDIT: Also, if they want a compare then have them compare you coming in doing this project to the cost of hiring and training a permi and then letting them go. Most likely the turn-around for a permanent employee is going to be 6mo at an absolute minimum (unless it's Zynga or some serious scumbags) where as your project could be hours or weeks.

There is one other possible alternative: those of us who feel strongly about this issue need to get into politics. If enough of us get in (obviously we'd have to adopt one of the big two parties, and start getting support at local or state levels first) we could shut this stuff down from the inside.

Of course, we'd need some protection against people defecting for the money. Maybe everyone has to make treasonous statements in front of a camera that we all carry or something, so if someone sells out we can have them jailed or executed for treason.

None I would say. The legislative makes the laws and assumes the executive won't enforce them if they're bad and/or the judicial will throw them out if they're not constitutional. Of course, plenty of things that are obviously unconstitutional don't come before the court for years if ever so they can't be struck down.

I'm not worried about this troll, I'm worried about people seeing their post, seeing no one slap it down and assume it's not a dangerous opinion to have.

Because the government has lots and lots of guns.

We could know by shutting them down and making the concept of secret courts illegal.

>I think it's wildly hypocritical of him to run to China and Russia because he's so opposed to government spying.

What a stupid complaint. He's opposed to his country spying, so he blows the whistle on them. Now what is he to do? Stay and become the next Manning, locked away in torture and forgotten about? He obviously has to go, so where? It has to be somewhere that can stand up to the US which, as we've just seen, isn't very fucking many places. Russia and China are pretty much the only realistic options here.

But no, he shouldn't be practical. He should be more concerned that some dumbass on the internet might call him a fucking hypocrite.

We're on the verge of losing the some very key values the internet provides here. We have to take our heroes as we can get them. Snowden has his flaws, but compared to the beast he's fighting it's clear who's worse.

Don't hold your american flag security blanket so tight, you're going to strangle it.

Are you serious? You think it would set a good precedent that the guy who blew the whistle on the world wide spying going on ends up rotting in jail? That helps us how exactly?